I'm leaving Catholicism

  • Thread starter Thread starter TheDefaultMan
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I just said, he is one person with two natures. I think that is pretty self explanatory.

You still have not stated the contradiction. Which if I am correct in saying for you and, according to Dudd, was not about Jesus being a person or even a person with two natures but being a person of a triune God (One Being - Three Persons)

To which I would say: what does it mean to be a person? We hopefully agree that you and I are both individual persons. But can there be beings who are not persons? what about a dog? (a singular being with no person-hood). If it is possible to be a being with and without that being a person, what is preventing a being from potentially being more than one person? In this case three persons.

I’m not implying that I understand how there could be three persons in one being, but logically, there is nothing that says its impossible. This is why Catholics refer to the Trinity as a mystery of the faith.

On a purely speculative note: Have you ever seen 4 Dimensional shapes as they would appear in the 3rd dimension? (there are plenty of Youtube videos) but it is possible for a single 4th dimensional shape to appear as 3 separate “figures” according to how we would perceive it in our 3rd Dimensional space. Not saying this is how the Trinity works…but it might be eye opening and it may help you to understand how it really is possible to believe in the Trinity despite the fact that it may not be currently explained by science and math. Plus the simple fact that there are far more religious people than nonreligious people across the span of history who have believed in God. Christianity having the current biggest following.
 
Last edited:
Hey guys. I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with the thread lately. I’ll respond to your guys’ posts later
 
Magnanimity said:
However, Scotus’ reasoning seems to directly allay your concerns (most of which are borne out of an insistence on a “real distinction” between the divine Persons). But you didn’t address any of that…
Click to expand...
I did. If formal distinctions are incoherent, then I shouldn’t have any reason to use it when thinking about the Trinity.
Magnanimity said:
Humanity itself, this relationality of personhood is like a small sacrament of the Real.
Click to expand...
I might have to read more into these arguments, but the Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of personhood is that a person is a being with a rational nature (an intellect and a will). I do not see the need for a plurality in personhood.
 
MarkRome said:
Ah, here is a problem. We wouldn’t know God is a Trinity without Divine Revelation.
Click to expand...
That’s not what I meant when I said that to him. He constantly told me that I’m wrong to appeal to logic and philosophy and that I should just trust Divine Revelation because that comes from God.

My problem is that I’m questioning whether or not this Divine Revelation really was a Divine Revelation, so appealing to it makes no sense.
 
ColoradoCatholic said:
Christianity having the current biggest following.
Click to expand...
Christians are divided into thousands of denominations. For example, it has been stated on these CAF forums that Christianity has more than 30,000 denominations with each denomination believing something different.
 
Theban said:
This is a very chemical definition of water, and you are correct that it is coherent, but I don’t think it works because in a similar vein we could reduce everything to the subatomic level and make the case that everything is really just protons and neutrons in different modes and patterns.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Again, I’m not an expert on NeoAristotelian applications to modern science, but there do seem to be properties that are not reducible to its parts. But even if the true substances were the protons and neutrons, it wouldn’t follow that all of our physical distinctions would be useless because you completely forgot about accidental forms. There can be real distinctions between accidental forms.
Theban said:
I didn’t say that God was a genus. As a matter of semantics I submitted to the idea that the Trinity could be thought of as a genus, in order to show you that there can be real differences between the Persons of the Trinity, and that x is y but y is not x.
Click to expand...
I’m sorry but as I’ve stated, this just can’t be the case. If X=Y, then Y=X, that’s just how it works. To say that the Father is God could not mean anything else other than the Father=God. Now, “is” can be used in other ways that don’t entail equal. To say that John is the mailman is not to say that mailman is part of John’s essence, or something. But this works because there can be distinctions between properties in John, whereas there could not be in God.
 
Wesrock said:
Claiming it is a logical relation only is, to me, like stating that the relation between mother and child is only logical and not real, or the relation between an agent and the end she wills and obtains is logical and not real.
Click to expand...
I would say this if the mother and the child were the exact same substance and if the mother and the child were absolutely simple.

And on your explanation of the processions, again, given that all of our predictions of God are analogical, it makes sense to say that we cna day the same of God while maintaining the integrity of his Simplicity. The same way that to us omnipresence and love are different, in God they are the same because our predictions of God of this are analogical.
 
ColoradoCatholic said:
That Jesus has two natures. He was one person, God the Son, who took on human nature in order to sacrifice himself and allow humanity to rescue themselves from eternal damnation if they so choose.
Click to expand...
Uhmmm that’s not the topic of this thread. We weren’t discussing the viability of the incarnation, but rather, the Trinity.

You can discuss the incarnation with other people if you want, but if I’m being honest I haven’t thought as much about that, so I won’t comment.
 
Last edited:
read the conversation above*

post 200-220
 
Last edited:
Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
That’s begging the question, and doesn’t even answer Theban’s question.
Click to expand...
No it’s not. Theban assumed that personhood was some separate entity, while what I’m saying is that personhood in God is identical to the Divine Essence because there could not be composition in God.

The way we understand God’s personhood is imperfect because we can only use analogical predicates as opposed to univocal ones.
 
Last edited:
TheDefaultMan said:
There can be real distinctions between accidental forms.
Click to expand...
But if there can be real distinctions between accidental forms, then surely the substantial changes made when water becomes ice, or isolated H2O molecules becomes a liquid substance, are enough to constitute a real difference?
TheDefaultMan said:
To say that the Father is God could not mean anything else other than the Father=God.
Click to expand...
Again, this comes down to how you define real distinctions. I don’t know how to argue this point any further, but there really is such a thing as to be able to say that x is y but y is not x in relation to God. If you accept that then I think you will see that there can be real distinctions between God without entailing an ontological difference.

That is not to say that the Persons in the Trinity make up different parts of God, God is absolutely simple and non-composite. The Persons are identical because they are all 100% the Divine Essence, and since (or if, if this is a contended point) a Personhood does not have a Being of its own, the only difference (which is a real one) is between the Persons themselves and their relationships to another, which are all the same but not each other.
TheDefaultMan said:
The Divine Essence could only be one Person because there cannot be a plurality in the Divine Essence.
Click to expand...
There isn’t plurality; three united Persons, one Essence, one Being.
 
TheDefaultMan said:
Theban assumed that personhood was some separate entity, while what I’m saying is that personhood in God is identical to the Divine Essence because there could not be composition in God.
Click to expand...
Not a separate entity, not an entity at all. God is the Entity, the Persons are the same Entity. There is no plurality of entities.
 
Theban said:
But if there can be real distinctions between accidental forms, then surely the substantial changes made when water becomes ice, or isolated H2O molecules becomes a liquid substance, are enough to constitute a real difference?
Click to expand...
I’ve said it so many times that people are willing to define ice and water vapor as essentially water, but assuming that water just is the liquid state of matter, then fine. I don’t think I’ll convince you that the scientific community, and people in general, do consider ice and water vapor to be essentially water, but it isn’t relevant to our discussion so I’m more than willing to drop it. It’s just semantical anyway.

That being said, there are other analogies to show that logical distinctions are possible, specifically in math.

1 x 4 and 2 x 2 are essentially the same, insofar as they are both 4. So, 1 x 4 is = or identical to 2 x 2.

The distinction between 1 x 4 and 2 x 2 are not real distinctions because they essentially refer to the same thing, but in light of different factors.
Theban said:
but there really is such a thing as to be able to say that x is y but y is not x in relation to God.
Click to expand...
There isn’t. If by “is” you mean identical to or equal to, then no. It’s literally not possible. Period. X = Y entails Y = X. Your analogies for why this isn’t the case fail under analysis because they essentially boil down to distinctions in properties, which do not and cannot exist in God.
Theban said:
The Persons are identical because they are all 100% the Divine Essence, and since (or if, if this is a contended point) a Personhood does not have a Being of its own, the only difference (which is a real one) is between the Persons themselves and their relationships to another, which are all the same but not each other.
Click to expand...
You keep on referring to “personhood”, as if it’s different from Being, which is not and cannot be the case in God. If " personhood" means intellect and will, then no. Intellect, Will, Existence, Omnipotence, etc. in God are all identical. Meaning that personhood just is identical to being or existence in God.
 
Last edited:
In answer, I can do no better than give you two quotations, one from George Orwell, and the other from the Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civitta Catholica…

First, Orwell:

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

Now Spadaro:

“Theology is not Mathematics. 2 + 2 in Theology can make 5. Because it has to do with God and real life of #people…”
 
Obviously it doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop Orwellian characters like Spadaro from asserting it does because, as I observed higher up, the Truth is divisive and you cannot expect to be liked for preaching it.
 
Maximian said:
Obviously it doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop Orwellian characters like Spadaro from asserting it does because, as I observed higher up, the Truth is divisive and you cannot expect to be liked for preaching it.
Click to expand...
I still don’t understand why 2 + 2 = 4 is divisive. Actually mathematics and mathematical truths are great unifiers as people from all backgrounds, Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, republicans and democrats, Catholics and Protestants, left and right, women and men, straight and gay, atheists and believers, Russians and Americans. Germans and French, Blacks and whites, Asians and Europeans, Chinese and Japanese, Serbs and Croats, all agree that 1 + 1 = 2.
So I don’t think that all truth is divisive because mathematical truth is a universal unifier and is not divisive.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top